Principles
of Practice and Duties of Physicians,
Medicine is
about compassion, service, altruism, and trustworthiness, values that have
always and will continue to guide the profession. These values are the basis
for the principles, duties and policies that follow.
Compassion
Individual
doctors serve their patients by assessing, diagnosing and treating patients,
and through rehabilitation and habilitation, palliation, health promotion, and
disease prevention. However, medicine is more than procedures and physicians
are more than purveyors of technology. Compassion is fundamental to the
relationship between the patient and the doctor. Compassion is defined as a
deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.
Service
Service means
working for the benefit of another. Doctors in Ontario are dedicated to serving
their patients.
To serve their
patients, physicians must be competent in the medical areas in which they
practice. Competence requires the application of current knowledge with
requisite skill and judgment needed to meet the patient’s medical needs. In
this, physicians should strive for excellence.
Service is not
only competence; it is also putting the patient first. A physician has
professional responsibility to their patients, individually and collectively;
their patients’ families; their own practice; and the health care system.
However, at any given time a physician’s primary responsibility is to the
individual patient before them.
Physicians, as a
profession, also have a collective responsibility to the public, which is
demonstrated by collaborating with and supporting colleagues and other health
professionals, and participating in self-regulation in the public interest. The
profession has a critical responsibility to the public as a whole via its
responsibility to regulate. Just as doctors serve patients, the College, as the
representative of the profession in self-regulation, has the ethical and
statutory responsibility to serve the public by regulating physicians in the
public interest.
Altruism
Altruism, as a
principle of action, is the highest commitment to service. Altruism in medicine
is defined as practising unselfishly and with a regard for others.
Patients’ needs
are paramount and must be considered before the individual physician’s needs,
the needs of physicians as a group, or the public as a whole. This is not to
say that physicians must sacrifice their health or other important aspects of
their life for their patients. Rather, it means that when providing care to a
patient, a physician should always put that patient first.
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness
is the cornerstone of the practice of medicine. It is the demonstration of
compassion, service and altruism that earns the medical profession the trust of
the public. This trust manifests itself in the social contract between the
profession and the public, as well as the relationship an individual patient
has with his or her doctor.
Maintaining
trust is an important aspect of medical professionalism. Patients must be able
to trust that the physician will always uphold the values of the profession; in
the absence of the trusting relationship the physician cannot help the patient
and the patient cannot benefit from the relationship.
